Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!andrew.cmu.edu!bas+
From: bas+@andrew.cmu.edu (Bruce Sherwood)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: International Language Support
Message-ID: <8WKYiky00UgCM600g4@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 6 Apr 88 15:16:00 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
Lines: 14
In-Reply-To: <691@kuling.UUCP>


To repeat a major complaint I have about ISO 8859 (which I'm distressed to see
is a component of NLS):

This standard is based on nations rather than languages.  So the West European
version doesn't handle Welsh or Catalan or Esperanto (which don't have their
own nations).

The older standard, ISO 6937, was based on forty Latin-alphabet-using
languages, not on nations.  So it handled just about everything (except for
Vietnamese) including Welsh and Catalan and Esperanto.

ISO 8859 is a MAJOR step backward in terms of linguistic equality.

Bruce Sherwood